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Originally posted by jellyfishfanatic:
Maybe I'm just not part of the "in-crowd", but can someone (nicely) explain tiny commanders for me?

I'm assuming a commander variation?

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It's actually called Tiny Leaders. You build 50 card decks with a 10 card sideboard. It has its own banned list and Pali42 is right that it's basically legacy with higher variance. I have a Nin deck that's essentially UR delver, but I'm slowly transitioning over to a Shu Yun list.

Here's the official site and rules. http://tinyleaders.blogspot.com/p/tiny-leaders-magic-gathering-format.html

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Originally posted by chaos021:
Ugin, the Spirit Dragon is overrated. That is all.

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Originally posted by chaos021:
Ugin, the Spirit Dragon is overrated. That is all.

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Whether or not casting Ugin is the optimal strategy in standard, everyone seems to be doing it. It's been cut down by the existence of the GW Mastery deck, which doesn't lose most of its creatures to an Ugin activation, but once Nykthos goes away, the card is going to be everywhere again. There were 2 copies in the top 8 of the SCG Invitational DTK standard (which Jacob Wilson won with 1 copy in his sideboard), and the FRF standard MTGO results from an April 1st daily event (most recent available) had 4 copies amongst the undefeated decks.

In modern, it's starting to show up in Gifts/Rites decks as well as tron lists.

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Originally posted by Ib3xcool:
Does anybody have a recommendation for an online program or app to keep track of all the foils I own? I have looked into a few , but the learning curve seems a bit high just to see if I like it. Does anyone have a favorite I can check out, or should I just build my own in excel? I dont have a ton of foils, but atleast several k of them, and dont want to type them out a few times just to find out the program sucks later down the road. I ideally would like something that I could easily check the price(and price changes), but that may just need to be my own creation. Thanks in advance!

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Winning deck: Red Deck Wins (beats UB Control in the finals)

Very diverse metagame. For anyone who doesn't play standard and has been thinking about it, I think this is a sign that R&D has a good read on potential interactions and has found a way to bring standard to a nice balance.

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Originally posted by dfitzg88:
Top 8 Standard from Pro Tour DTK:
2 Green devotion, 1 RG Dragons, 1 Red deck wins, 3 Blue-Black control, 1 Abzan Control

Winning deck: Red Deck Wins (beats UB Control in the finals)

Very diverse metagame. For anyone who doesn't play standard and has been thinking about it, I think this is a sign that R&D has a good read on potential interactions and has found a way to bring standard to a nice balance.

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Originally posted by caquaa:
T8 at a PT is irrelevant information since 6 rounds are limited. You need to dig deeper and obtain standard records. Someone that 0-6 draft won't make T8 no matter how well their standard deck performs.

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Originally posted by caquaa:
T8 at a PT is irrelevant information since 6 rounds are limited. You need to dig deeper and obtain standard records. Someone that 0-6 draft won't make T8 no matter how well their standard deck performs.

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how is the top 8 at a pro tour irrelevant? these players played 10 rounds of standard against the best players around with 2 losses or less.

even if the tournament was 16 rounds of standard, there is a chance that the winner of the tournament only won because every single opponent mulled to 2 or had heart attacks.

variance doesn't make the top 8 irrelevant. the whole game is variance.

Edit: best performing standard decks
http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/ptdtk/24-27-point-standard-decklists-2015-04-12

2 Abzan Aggro
3 Abzan Control
4 Blue/Black Control
2 Green Devotion
2 Green/Red Dragons
*1 Red Deck Wins
2 Green/White Devotion

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Originally posted by dfitzg88:
how is the top 8 at a pro tour irrelevant? these players played 10 rounds of standard against the best players around with 2 losses or less.

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He explained it pretty well. Making top 8 doesn't mean you have a good picture of standardbecause limited results also affect making top 8.

A player could play an average standard deck with an average standard record and still get top 8 even if no extreme variance was involved. Conversely, the best performing decks in standard don't always make top 8 because the player did poorly in limited.

For example, Brad Nelson, Chester Swords, and Josh Utter-Leyton went 9-1-0 in standard (tied for best record) but didn't make top 8. Joey Manner went 8-1-1 and also didn't make top 8.

http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/ptdtk/24-27-point-standard-decklists-20 15-04-12

http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/ptdtk/Top-8-decklists-2015-04-11

Pro Tour top 8 decklists are not as good an indicator of format diversity as SCG Open or Grand Prix top 8's.

Edit: More evidence top 8 is a bad metric - of the top 16 performing decks, only one of those players (Strasky) was in the top 8.

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Originally posted by Pail42:
Pro Tour top 8 decklists are not as good an indicator of format diversity as SCG Open or Grand Prix top 8's.

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I didn't say it's proof. I said it's not irrelevant. Saying it's irrelevant that the top 8 was composed of a number of different decks, each at 8-2 or better in standard at a Pro Tour with the best players around, is ridiculous.

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Originally posted by Pail42:
For example, Brad Nelson, Chester Swords, and Josh Utter-Leyton went 9-1-0 in standard (tied for best record) but didn't make top 8. Joey Manner went 8-1-1 and also didn't make top 8.

Edit: More evidence top 8 is a bad metric - of the top 16 performing decks, only one of those players (Strasky) was in the top 8.

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You know that six of the top 8 competitors didn't play at least one round of Standard and took an intentional draw instead, right?

-Anyone can enter an open series, and invitational qualifiers generally have a lower turn out than PTQs, leading to a less likelihood that a player needs to be in the upper echelon to qualify for an invitational. This means your opponent is more likely to be an average player than at a Pro Tour
-Less testing is done by players heading into the SCG open than a Pro Tour. At a pro tour, teams are more likely to invest a significant amount of time into finding new technology and exploiting it. Conversely, there was a lot of talk about CFB players in the top 2 of the first DTK SCG Invi (won by Jacob Wilson with GW Devotion) and whether or not they had held anything back in the decks they used so as not to give away any pro tour tech.

The only thing that makes the Top 8 of an SCG Open/Invitational more meaningful is that it's done after 16 rounds of standard only. And yet, the decklists from the first Top 8 DTK Invitational contained no Blue/Black control lists, even though they were the best performing deck at the pro tour.

Now, again, I'm not saying the PT Top 8 is the best metric for evaluating the decks in standard. I'm continuing to say it is NOT IRRELEVANT. And, in my opinion, still a more useful tool than an SCG top 8.

The Top 8 of the Pro Tour on gives limited insight on the pro-tour constructed metagame. It's not the metagame at a GP, PTQ, SCG open, etc. which the rest of us can actually play in.
The best-constructed-record decks give a better idea of what the metagame is like and which decks are good for that constructed format, but it's still not great for determining what you'll see outside the pro-tour.

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Originally posted by Pail42:
http://archive.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtgcom/academy/19
"The metagame, essentially, refers to what everyone else is playing."

The Top 8 of the Pro Tour on gives limited insight on the pro-tour constructed metagame. It's not the metagame at a GP, PTQ, SCG open, etc. which the rest of us can actually play in.
The best-constructed-record decks give a better idea of what the metagame is like and which decks are good for that constructed format, but it's still not great for determining what you'll see outside the pro-tour.

http://magic.wizards.com/en/events/coverage/ptfrf/modern-metagame-breakdown
Taking a look back to the last pro-tour the metagame, it is very different than what everybody else is playing. If you go to a modern event expect much less than 7% of the field to be playing infect and much more than 4% to be playing UR Twin.

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I never argued that. You're talking in circles.

Even so, the top 8 of that event consisted of what I feel is a good indicator of the best decks in modern;

Eric Froeliech - Abzan
Antonio Del Moral Leon - UR Twin
Jelger Wiegersma - UR Twin
Seth Manfield - Burn
Justin Cohen - Amulet Bloom
Jacob Wilson - Abzan Aggro/Hatebears
Lee Shi Tian - Burn
Jesse Hampton - Abzan

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Originally posted by dfitzg88:
I never argued that. You're talking in circles.
...
That information, similarly, is not irrelevant in evaluating the modern metagame.

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Originally posted by Pail42:
I have never argued that Pro Tour Top 8 results irrelevant to the non-pro tour metagame - I have argued that they are less useful than most other Top 8's and less useful than other metrics from the Pro Tour.

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Well your first point seemed to be that you were in agreement about the results being irrelevant.

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Originally posted by revenger:
Why is Deathmist Raptor so expensive? I don't care for it. It's like it only fits into one catergory of deck, megamorph decks or the like.

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The set has only been out for a few weeks, it was in a few well performing decks at the PT, it's a playable mythic...take your pick.

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